> Once they define it as stealing, then it's morally indefensible, by definition.
Right, similar to the equivocation around the meaning of earn in this thread. I've started to wonder whether it's possible to push by accepting that framing and then asking for a justification rather than quibbling about what "stealing" is.
Some of that 30% has both directly and indirectly empowered war crimes and has pushed on the accelerator of an unspeakable [and, sadly, irreversible] descent into the kind of mad fascistic experiment that always ends up driving many more. The seizure of means that you turn around and use for rent-seeking is morally indefensible in its own right, but it’s the unintended (yet obvious) consequences of that same self-serving and short-sighted impulse where the real moral trap lies.